Blood and Water
by rusalkagirl
Summary: She asks Monroe if she is the only girl he's done something like this to. He says she is her favorite. He does not say that it is because he could not keep Miles.


The gunshots sing uniformly, cracking one by one like the tick of a clock.

Miles is the first to go. He cannot be the savior anymore, and certainly no one else will take his place. Charlie tries; Charlie with her big heart and even bigger death wish, the apple of the militia's eye. It is not the first time she steps in front of a gun for her little brother, but it is the first in which the trigger bites anyway. The president does not like this, and he has planned for it to happen. He knows her. He moves Charlie easily, the handcuffs and gag not doing her any favors. She is on the other side of the execution, and she believes, the wrong one. The bullet is wild. A second soldier is behind, raising his own rifle. Danny is shot.

It is the last thing Miles sees – his niece kicking blindly to save his nephew, his once best friend detaining her, palms cupping parts of her body he is sure nobody has touched before, their mother disassociating, Matheson blood staining the cold concrete. He wants to make a joke about family lines, how they are sharing their blood literally now, but the thought disperses with his final breath.

Charlie wants to scream, _needs_ to sob like she were a newborn again, anything to grab her mother's attention. No one lets her. It is almost worse to watch Rachel there, unaffected, vacant, than to feel everyone else's entrails pooling against the pads of her feet. The groans, the guts, those are signs that life once existed in Miles and Danny – her uncle, her little brother, her family, her blood.

But her mother's heart is still beating, and she is already dead. They do not have the unspoken, eye contact of a goodbye that Charlie got with the others. The apology, the concluding moment of peace between them.

Monroe ends her differently; she fades away. One of his hands squeezes Charlie's. The other rests on Rachel. He kills her with inches between them, the hard profile of her face never flinching through the loud burst of pain. She falls, and her chest heaves, and it lasts for minutes that feel like hours to Charlie who has been painted by her mother's insides and is standing in the remnants of her brother and sees her uncle lifeless a few feet away, her Uncle Miles who would normally make a joke but _can't_.

She is on the ground now, too, her wrists being crushed from the weight of Monroe trying to pull her back up. Strands of her hair are glued together by the remains, the residue of the only people she has ever loved. She wants to believe that they are with Ben now, somewhere better. Somewhere the militia has no firepower. But she can't – it's useless. Her father would not recognize any of them, their faces grey and brutalized.

Vomit threatens her throat, and she chokes when it has no way to escape. It echoes above them, stagnant with the cascaded whimpers of the dying. Her head hits the ground. Her cheek touches her mother's corpse. Clean air has gone, her mouth is useless, she will suffocate, she cannot breathe or speak or cry except for the watery snot spilling out of her nose.

Her arms throb, yet her body will not grant her strength to stand up. She wonders if the warmness she feels against the metal restraints is some of her blood, if she will be next. She hopes.

He raises her, nails digging into the shallow grove of her armpits. And Charlie does not understand why, but she thinks about sucking on his fingertips, tonguing the hind of his knuckles, wherever there is a trace of Danny, Miles, or Rachel, because he does not deserve to know them. Their cadavers are too sacred for him to taint. Charlie wants to sink her teeth in his skin. Beg _please, please, let me keep some piece of them_. Thinking _they're mine, you bastard. You took them away from me. You can't have them._

They leave the room – just her and the president, him dragging her across the cement. Her flesh catches on the floorboards near his quarters. She bleeds and she loves to have it on her. The last time her family will be together, and it is drying up too fast.

He lets her scream, encourages her to. She is next to his bed, on her knees, her shoulders wracking with relief. Too much relief. She cannot scream now. She cries and cries and wants to flood the room, drown them both in her tears. He holds her. She is too exhausted to fight, she ruins his shirt, she creates flowers of her pain on it until he lifts her onto his mattress. She soils the sheets, too. But he is silent. He closes her eyelids for her, like a ball jointed doll. Bends her knees into the fetal position.

Then, they sleep.

* * *

Before this, Bass would think about Miles with fondness. His brother. The man who trained him to kill without mercy.

He wondered if Miles did not miss him. It would not make sense for him to, and that made Bass want to find him even more. But he soon figured out that Charlie is better – Miles, but easy to contain. Like Miles, but pure. Innocent still. A child. A little girl. With hair to curl around his wrist if she wanted to run away, legs just strong enough to wrap around his waist.

She would never get to leave him. She is better than Miles.

* * *

He is there when she wakes up, so close he is almost on top of her. Intimidating even though she could slip out from beneath him. Grab the knife. Slit his throat. Carry it down to his heart, gouge it through.

She thinks about it. She does. Miles – god, _Miles_. He told her it was okay to murder sometimes.

Good mothers birth bad sons, it is okay.

He did not say she could kill Bass, though. Bass, his best friend. She does not believe this is her battle to fight; it will always be between the two of them.

They embrace each other, his breath a disgusting reminder of life against her neck. Across the room, Charlie can tell that the bedroom door is locked in several places. There are not any windows she can jump from. She wonders if she is meant to be just a ghost of the Mathesons, the phantom that gives the militia moth-eaten clothes and makes them wash their blankets again and again without ever being able to erase the stains where she laid.

She wonders if using Monroe's knife to commit suicide would be wrong – branding him onto herself again. She wonders if it would be like making love, if her death causes them both happiness. His most important part, what made him president, inside of her.

Their bodies could be sold in fractions, her family lost throughout the republic. Or he may have a shed overflowing with his favorite kills. He'd never have to worry about not seeing Miles' pretty eyes again if they are his to own, hiding in his closet. Can pry Miles' eyelids apart whenever he needs a fix. Slither Rachel's thinning hair through his teeth. Or the carcasses are transported to meadows, home to a cemetery, weeds trampled on by boots and shovels – earth dying with its people.

But there were once girls who made lockets out of the grass from there. Charlie could spend hours gathering flowers after a summer rain; there was once too much life to keep up with. Now, we do not have enough space for all of our dead.

He grunts, his muscles tightening and loosening against her back, limbs bent between hers. He awakes slowly. It would be pleasant anywhere else – a butterfly taking flight. But he only holds her as a prisoner. Only gets tangled up in her so she can't escape. She can sense him watching her from behind, the gaze burning.

"Charlotte," he says, shifting his torso onto her to meet eyes, "I see you looking at my knife. I know what you are thinking, sweetheart. It is either you or me. It doesn't have to be that way, you know. You need me." His touch made spider patterns on her shoulder, tickling, distracting. He is everywhere. His voice stays level even as he is awakening. "I need you, too. We will be okay together as long as you are good to me, and be my doll. Did you ever have one of those to take care of when you were a child?"

She remains immobile. His words drift off of her, like smoke. She thinks she is turning into her mother. Monroe notices; elbow sharp in the small of her back, he nudges her. She does not let him know it hurts.

"I..." Her lips seem sewn together – caked in a mess of everything and everyone that left her last night. She is dried out. Her throat stings. It is bruising to speak after those hours of barely breathing. Somehow, someone has used a needle and thread on her mouth and forced her to swallow barbwire. "They were _toys_. I would only _play_ with my dolls."

Monroe laughs, hot into her hair. Scent of Miles' death still on her. "We can do both."

* * *

Two of his men calm her trembling with their rough grasp, then lock her in a bathroom suite. There is a mirror here, a hot bath, wallpaper, woven towels, lovely things.

She stares at herself and is only able to think about how small she is compared to the militia. It has been but hours – maybe a day. But she has already weakened. She is no longer a woman, hardly a girl. She is no longer a daughter, or a sister, or a niece. Her bones are as empty and as delicate as a glass cup; if someone were to drop her, she would shatter. And Monroe wants to cradle her, like precious shards of porcelain, like he knows she is likely to be destroyed, and he is her protector. Or the only one allowed to break her.

He is upset with her, because she has not been able to scream yet. Her body will not allow it. He calls her names. Says she is being just like Rachel – her mother, that stony bitch. He says he spared her because she is so dynamic, so real, so she better fucking act it. She better fucking feel the agony he is putting her through.

They insist Charlie is not good enough to wash herself. She takes too long. Is too careful.

Monroe has to scrub the crusted blood, opaque as mud, from her scalp to her heels, leaving no time to savor the extant seconds with Miles' physical form. Danny's physical form. Her mother's. When she begins to cry, inaudibly, he cleans the tears away, too. The soap blinds her a little, and she realizes she does not mind. She does not need eyes, can _feel_ how her skin is blistering and peeling under Monroe's hands. And it would look ugly. She remembers the feral, ruined-looking thing in the mirror, and she does not mind if she never sees herself again.

He will dry her, and sit her nakedness on his knee, so that he can rave about how gorgeous she is while braiding her hair – back to its rich, honey color. She is an angel now that she is clean. She is pure for him. When he touches her, she is nothing but her and is nobody's but his.

* * *

Monroe burns his corpses.

The republic has a ceremony of sorts, a bonfire fueled by curdling skin and stringy hair. He shows Charlie the bodies beforehand because she asks to. Nothing is really the same. Uncle Miles' chest is absent of warmth and home, and Danny has evaded the scent of a perspiring teenage boy. As always, her mother's eyes are dead. That's okay. Normal.

It does not touch her, grief, until she sees the ashes. Watching her family dissolve, become smoke and then polluted air and then nothing.

He grabs the width of her stomach so she cannot sprint into the flames. Like a noose, misplaced. She stares up at him, youthful, pupils wide in anguish, and he has to cover her eyes with his hand. She howls, he lets her bite into his wrist. But there is nothing he can do to disguise the odor of rotting flesh. Charlie tries not flare her nostrils, tries not to breathe, but she knows that Monroe will contract her lungs for her if he has to. He does anything if he has to.

* * *

Cleanup is repulsive. The grass is either charred or concealed by ruddy chunks of flesh, like spring blossoms. Charlie's toes raze on contact, not provided with any footwear, just a sack to stuff ashes in. Unsure if she is carrying a deteriorated twig or her little brother cremated. She receives no help – Monroe's orders. It is a chance for her to get to know the grounds of her new home.

She gurgles, spitting out the acid flavor of death. Nausea plagues her anyway. She sits, brings her knees up to her chest. Creates a fence, her face versus the world.

Monroe's people find her there some time or another. Rocking back and forth. Right buttock, left buttock, right. She has shrank behind a bush, anywhere there are not pieces of what she once had. _They're gone_, Charlie reminds herself. She would like to be gone, too, from them and from the militia and from herself.

But mostly, she wants to stop coughing, because if she vomits, she'll have to be the one to clean it up.

"Charlotte," the voice startles her. It commands attention, has presence. Monroe is out of his uniform, though, and seems shorter. Less broad. She pretends that she is more afraid of him than she is. Really, she is indifferent. Nothing he does matters.

Her neck snaps upwards, they observe each other. The once sea blue eyes, full of quivering wet waves when she became sad, that stole Bass' heart – now bloodshot. Bruised, the hues flowing together into something indistinct. As a toddler, Charlie would make fun of him for having the same name as a fish, and he liked to joke about the oceans in her eyes. He said he'd love to swim in them. And here they are, dehydrated. No creatures, no boats, no reef. Even her dimples have disappeared into her hollowed cheeks, her sadness. But her lips have not changed, billowy and chapped, red without makeup, always feverish. It was once very important to him to kiss her, so long that he could fill in the cracks and fissures of her mouth with his tissue. Until their lips give the same imprint.

She does not like the way he watches her, as if it pains him to do so. "Yes?" she squeaks. Talking has not gotten easier.

Monroe blushes, the deep scarlet of anger, but talks calmly, "You can go back inside now. There are things you can do there. How about you clean our room? The blankets need washed, and there are some rags for the walls and floor."

_Our_ room. It cuts.

He notices. He smiles fondly at her. A father to a daughter. His knees bend, and he is squatting down to her level, whispering at her volume, matching his pitch to the color of her light skin. "I'm sorry, sweet girl. I never want to see you wince like that again, okay, please, Charlotte? How about I go inside with you? We can talk, just you and me. I'll have someone make you a delicious dinner. One of your favorites. You'll be safe and warm with me all night. I promise, sweet girl. I'll be good to you."

When she tries to shake her head, bury it into her lap, he caresses her jaw. Prevents her from moving her gaze away from him. Her eyes rival his, then, two seas colliding. She is angry, the line on her forehead reveals. She is the kind of cross Rachel would never be. Something in Bass' stomach lurches – happily, breathlessly. He is going to taste her soon, he decides, and finally have what the other Mathesons could not give him.

* * *

Bass has many stories, pleasant ones involving her family. The best is about Miles as a teenager, a young adult – Charlie's age or younger.

He and Bass would go out on the lake when they were stationed in South Carolina. It got pretty hot in the summertime, the water in a dense fog. Miles liked to cool off by splashing himself, not much, but enough to catch a breeze. While reaching over the side of their boat one day, however, he fell in. Head first. They both seemed to panic; Miles began to cough and sputter, Bass rushing to reel him back aboard. By the time he had, his best friend's eyes were closed, and the only noises being made were pitiful whines.

"I need you to open your eyes for me, Miles," Bass begged. For five minutes straight, he alternated between pleading for any small breath and using his forearms to work orphaned water from his belly.

Just when he was about to resort to CPR, mouth to mouth, Miles laughed and tipped the whole damn boat over with a limp push. They had been at an extremely shallow part of the lake – less than five feet worth. He had been okay the whole time. Just fucking with Bass.

Charlie likes this story, because she believes it. Uncle Miles was _never_ scared of Monroe.

* * *

He puts his mouth on hers. But she would not say it is a kiss, kisses are like two blankets going through the wash together. Soft, warm, cared for. No, this has all the characteristics of a sting. Close to a bite. A rash itching. Hives. Except Monroe is not a bumblebee, and does not die, does not have to sacrifice himself to hurt her a single time; if that had been the case, her family would be alive. She would be making out behind sheds, shaded by overgrowth, with some boy from her village. She has never really considered love or sex or relationships until now. None of it is important. Monroe does not even appear to think it is important, nor significant. He just does it – just tongues at her, uses her smoothness to massage himself.

Two fingertips press to the base of her neck, and the vague muscles are enough to tilt her head back. She feels exposed. White skin creasing into the knob of her Adam's apple. Monroe knows her gaze is not at him, just a blank stare at his ceiling. He stops, he says she is beautiful, calls her Charlotte. She does not think that being beautiful matters.

* * *

Nightmares. Real life ones, asleep ones, in between ones.

Charlie has stopped being able to discern which is which, where her consciousness opens and ends. Her brain formulates images of torture – her family, her. Nothingness being more than nothing, as fluids and diseases and scabs swallowing up the severed bodies of her, Miles, Rachel, and Danny. When she tries to shake herself out of it, she wakes up with him. Monroe. He is swaying her, gently, firmly, she doesn't know. He just wants her to wake up. Can tell she's breaking apart in her dreams.

Even in the middle of the night, he likes to talk about it. What _happened_. She doesn't. Even in though it's middle of the night, they both have morning breath, and it rots her teeth like carcasses. Talking is like vomiting.

Touching her is testing fate, one wrong move and she'll shatter. Or become catatonic – become her mother. He prefers her this way, aching, creating waterfalls of her eyes. Rachel always had pretty eyes, too, but they were like crystals melting with the years. Dying. And Miles could kill people with his eyes, the only emotion they could show. He had gotten a hold of Rachel. Charlie shows everything, she inhales through her eyes. Even with them closed, she can see the hell she is in. She does not know when she is asleep and when she is awake – just that it is all a nightmare.

* * *

She asks Monroe if she is the only girl he's done something like this to. He says she is her favorite. He does not say that it is because he could not keep Miles.

* * *

Charlie is caught eyeballing the knife again – its grey silk forming the kind of mirage automobiles would whilst driving on hot pavement. Before the Blackout. They choose to punish her, Monroe and a couple of his men. No one is sure, not even Charlie, what she wants to do with the knife, just that she likes watching it. So out of place on his antique wood desk. Sometimes when she stares, she daydreams about the mere power of holding it. Monroe can wield it on anyone, including himself, and in seconds, there is blood. His weapons are so impressive that they are much like his family: the largest gun his father, sharpest sword his mother, and all the smaller tools as his little sisters. She does not understand how right she is.

Her body is pinned into a chair, ropes attached to the jutting bones of her wrists. A soldier asks if he needs to tie up her legs. If she is a kicker. She shakes her head; she has nowhere to run back to even if she could get away.

Aware of each of her body parts, each of her limbs, she realizes how anemic of an appearance she has taken. She gulps. Nor would she have the strength to kick anyone. Usually a cornflower blue, vague as skies behind a cloud, her veins are a strained, vivid purple – akin to the bruises painted upon them. Her eyes feel inches deeper into her skull, their vision blurred. Sunken. And Monroe insists she is beautiful.

"Charlotte," he warns, not able to hold her gape. She does not remember his hand on top of her thigh, the nearest it has been to that unmentionable place. Below him, she shudders. He moves, but tautens a grip on her shoulders. "Charlotte, this is going to hurt. You need to get those ideas out of your head. This is _my_ knife. Not yours. You've made me have to show you that. This is going to hurt, and it is your fault. I don't want to hurt you." Charlie blinks, confusedly, her mind detached and in the air. Everyone is like a photograph. It is there, it is life, it is colored, but it is all very still.

"What are you…?" She trails off, perceiving her answer. A man steps towards her. He holds the knife.

At her side, Monroe waits patiently. The first cut is long, delayed. Dirty. She wonders how the blade got to be so warm, when she never sees it in use; she wonders if it became used to gutting people and animals before she was even born. She tenses, only releasing a scream when the knife is disjointed from her. That is when the throb sets in. Monroe sighs against her. Nuzzles her neck. Whispers about how he never wants to hurt her. He is sorry. He just wants her to behave, to be his.

The second slice is shorter. It is clumsy, diagonal. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she does not cry out. Maybe some tears fall, but she does not want him to hear anything.

The third is easy. She exhales, the breath hardly shaking.

The fourth scalds. Charlie can't help it; she groans, and her mouth grabs a stray hair from the top of Monroe's head, so near to her chest. Spit drops from the corner of her lips. If he notices, he does not mention it. Hand on her hip, palm between her legs. He holds her up, and holds her to him, and that is worse than being slashed open.

She cannot count anymore. She cannot wiggle around, any thrust good for Monroe. She just weeps, "Bass, Bass," and nobody stops, so she adds, "Miles…loved you, Bass. Why are you doing this? Bass." Because maybe he can remember his best friend, her uncle, the one who would play dumb pranks, the one he loved so much. The one she loved so much.

"Bass, please?" Charlie tries. His whole left half grazes hers, saying _you are mine_. He nods at the soldier.

And nobody stops.

* * *

The blood seeping through bandages reveal an ambiguous, but familiar symbol. Severe crests of an M surrounded by a circle representing unity.

Monroe and Matheson united. Now, just him and her – the last remaining Matheson.


End file.
